


Emma Swan's So Not Fun Eighties Movie Adventure

by anamatics



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Female Friendship, POV Female Character, trigger warning: mentions of past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 10:19:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for 2x03 - Emma isn’t really sure what Snow means by the King of the Goblins, but holy god David Bowie she actually gets that reference.  Once, with Special Guest Star Jareth the Goblin King</p>
            </blockquote>





	Emma Swan's So Not Fun Eighties Movie Adventure

Snow gets this determined look on her face and Emma finds herself just staring at it for a moment as dawn breaks over their small camp. Mulan and Aurora are sleeping stubbornly back to back and Emma wishes for the life of her that they'd just fucking have sex and get over it. It's getting annoying really.

Mulan doesn't talk much, but there's a lot of hurt there when she does talk. Emma's not much of a feminist, she's never really been able to have the time to be one, but even she can think its bullshit that Mulan and Aurora met with a man between them. The rules of how love works are different here. Snow's explained them more times than Emma cares to count, talking about her Prince Charming (who is everything that David Nolan was not apparently) and how there's only one shot at love in this damn place. For Mulan to know that Aurora has already found that love must be torture and a half.

Emma asks if Regina's true love was Snow's father, because at this point she's pretty sure that Regina's her step-grandma and her family is damn fucked up as it is. She's not mentioning how every time she thinks of Regina, she feels much the way Snow's describing. It doesn't seem prudent, not when she's fucking up every ten minutes and having to get rescued like some goddamn damsel in distress.

"Cora ripped out the heart of Regina's true love," is all Snow will say on the subject and Emma really wishes that she had bothered to pay attention to Henry when he was trying to tell her the stories. 

She couldn’t let that woman anywhere near Henry; she was too evil, too powerful and way too corrupting. Henry was a good kid; he didn't deserve to be around such a woman. Regina was enough and Regina had finally escaped her too.

When Emma was ten and a half, she'd been sent to a foster home run by a woman so cruel that Emma had done everything in her power to get sent away from that place. She had sat through the beatings silently, had done her penance and had whispered prayers to a god that would never answer her. The marks still stood in stark relief against the white skin of her back, should she choose to look for them. 

She would never let such a woman get to either of them.

"Who can we go to," she asks Snow as they break camp and head northwards towards a mountain ridge that appears blue in the distance. Mulan seems to be eyeing it with some trepidation, her hand on her sword and her eyes narrowed.

"There is one being," Snow says, and Emma feels uneasy because Snow doesn't say man. She says being, which means that there's more ogres in her future and frankly, that scares the piss out of Emma. "He's one of the few in our realm who travels across worlds without trouble."

"Like Jefferson?" Emma asks, because the man was pretty fucking nuts but at least he'd talked some semblance of sense when the entire world hadn't made much. 

"No," Snow looks away and to the horizon, "The hatter was someone different. This man is a king."

Mulan turns and looks sharply at Snow. "You cannot mean..."

"But I do..." Snow says with a wry smile. "We must seek out the fae, more specifically the king of the goblins."

Emma's eyes widen, because she's seen this movie before and fuck that. "I am not going to see David fucking Bowie in leather pants," she mutters, grabbing her sword and scowling at the group of them. 

"Who?" Aurora asks, because she's just fucking adorable. Emma sighs and runs a hand through her hair. She doesn’t know how to tell Aurora that there's a Disney movie all about her and how shitty her life as been.  There's Disney movies about all of them and Emma knows the stories like the back of her hand.

Once, she put her hope in those stories and they lead her far astray.  She had always longed for a prince charming to come and rescue her from her curse life. Even more so than her parents. She'd ended up in prison and pregnant, undeserving of the treatment she was given there. All she'd wanted was to get away, to move on from that place when her time was gone and she was officially eighteen and free of the weight of the foster system for once and for all. 

Snow shakes her head and looks very much like Mary Margaret in that moment and Emma feels a pang of loss. She misses Mary Margaret because as fun and badass as Snow is, she isn't Mary Margaret. Emma's never really had a friend before, and the fact that she was single-handedly responsible for the removal of that friendship from her life cut far more deeply than Emma was willing to admit. 

"The Goblin King," Emma explains. "Steals babies from my world-"

"This is your world, Emma," Snow insists for the millionth time, her cheeks puffed out in exasperation.

"Whatever," Emma says, before turning back to Aurora. Because she likes Aurora even if the girl is a little bit boy crazy (or Mulan crazy, Emma's still working that out) and a little bit revenge crazy (Emma's already got one of those in her life; two is too many). She looks at Aurora's big eyes and pretty face and smiles. "He takes babies that are wished away to the Labyrinth."

Snow scowls and Mulan looks surprised. Emma folds her arms smugly across her chest and raises an eyebrow at Snow, "Am I wrong?

They shake their heads as one. "How you know is a mystery to me," Snow mutters to Emma as they start off on the long road towards David fucking Bowie in tight pants.

Emma doesn't have the heart to point out to Snow that outside of Storybrooke these stories exist and she's read a lot of them. Also, David Bowie in fucking tight pants - she was a teenager once. It was the late nineties, and she had an appreciation for everything eighties because that was the cool and hip thing to do.

As was listening to Nirvana and shooting heroin, but Emma liked to pick her poison. So many of her peers had turned to drugs to escape their lives. She knew that she was stronger than them, and while this whole misadventure felt like an acid trip gone terribly wrong, she was going to be stone cold sober while it happened.

They travel northwards across a forest filled with thickets of briars and bogs that are disturbingly like the ones Emma remembers from Florida. She's sure that she's going to see catfish at any possible moment, walking along the shore looking to fuck shit up. 

"You are awfully quiet," Snow comments as they stop by a stream and refill their flasks. Emma's a little skeptical of drinking the water - deer shit and the like - but Snow assures her that she's been drinking this water her entire life. "This stream is one of the tributaries to the river that snakes across this land," Snow explains, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and smiling brightly at Emma.

Emma takes the flask and drinks - it is cool and actually makes her feel little better as they traipse onwards.

 

Because she's somehow gotten stuck in a Disney movie, Emma has decided that the best way to entertain herself is to attempt to get them all to break out into song. She's tried a few songs that she still remembers before she casually slides into step besides Mulan. "Tell me," she says as Mulan and her fucking weird-ass hair-do (double bumpits... seriously?) turn to give Emma withering look that could peel paint. "Do you know a man named Shang?"

 

She wants to cackle, because Mulan actually _blushes_. Mission accomplished. She looks away and grips her sword tightly, "Shang is who he says he is."

"How do you mean," Emma asks because what the hell, she's already stuck in a Disney movie, she might as well get the actual story. She has a feeling it is a lot more complicated than Disney ever made it out to be. 

"He is a great commander and a good friend," Mulan's eyes turn towards the east and the horizon where there is a break in the trees and the sky seems to stretch on for miles. "He wanted something from me that I could not give him." Mulan smiles a sheepish smile, "I am not a man, you see."

Emma nods, because she's been attracted to a gay guy or two in her time. "Shit blows, sorry."

"Yes," Mulan agrees, "It does."

They travel for what feels like weeks, but Emma knows that it cannot be more than a few days. She worried about Regina's crazy-ass mother, and about how Henry is doing at home. She knows that Regina must be taking care of him, or at least maintaining the status quo. Henry's a good kid, he'll figure it out eventually - she truly does love him as much as Emma does. Maybe even more so, because she was the one who raised him.

That night they sit around a fire in silence and Emma leans against Snow's shoulder. She really does miss Mary Margaret, but Snow is growing on her. Emma really isn't used to having a mom, and Snow's dived right into that. It's strange, curiouser and curiouser, as they put it, to see herself with a mother. Snow isn't who she suspected, but Emma's okay with it.

"Tell me of your son," Aurora says from across the fire. She's wrapped up in Emma's jacket again despite the night not being that cold and is carefully stripping leaves off of the straightest greenwood that they can find. They're going to run out of arrows sooner or later, Mulan had explained, and it was best to at least start making them.

Emma really does like Aurora. She's all broken up about Philip, and Emma really understands that. She's been there, August is cursed just like Philip is now and Emma is starting to feel as though she's never going to get back to Storybrooke to reunite him with his father - let alone see about saving his ass. 

 

She's basically the worst savior ever and Henry's gonna be so disappointed when he finds out that she isn't the hero he's built her up to be.

"His name is Henry," Emma begins. She starts as Snow hums quietly and tangles her fingers up in Emma's. This is way too intimate for Emma and she has to violently push back her want to run away. She's no good at this shit, and Snow doesn't seem to get that.  "He's ten - almost eleven now." She smiles ruefully thinking of the kid and how much he's grown on her since she first came to Storybrooke. "He's... I don't know - you know that feeling you get when you look at someone you love? When your heart feels fit to burst? That's how he is."

"He sounds like a very smart boy," Aurora agrees with a private smile of her own. "I would be honored to meet him."

Emma nods, because she knows that Henry would ecstatic to meet a fairy tale character that actually looks and acts like how he thinks one should act. Henry would thrive in this world, and Emma doesn't want to be here.

 

Rock, meet hard place.

 

Story of her fucking life.

Two days later they find themselves at the edge of the mountains, and Snow casts a stone into a deep lake with a contemplative look. She says something that Emma cannot quite hear and steps back. She's drawn her sword and stands at the ready in her pink sweater and chinos. 

Emma wishes that they'd gotten clothing that actually blended into the land a bit more back when they were around civilization. She knows that Snow's goddamn pink sweater must be a like a Cora-homing beacon and she's not entirely sure why Snow hasn't ditched it yet. Maybe because it's cold all the goddamn time here. 

Nothing happens for a long time and Emma finds herself standing protectively in front of Aurora as Mulan prowls the shore of the lake. "You don't need to protect me," Aurora points out, pulling out her dagger and casting nervous glances around the rocky shore where they're standing. 

  

"Mulan will murder me in my sleep if I don't," Emma points out, standing with her own sword ready. She's _got_  to as Mulan to teach her how to use it, but she doesn't think she can resist singing 'Make a Man Out Of You' to her if it ever does happen and she likes all of her limbs attached to her body, thank you very much. "So you're stuck."

"Goody," Aurora mutters, but lets Emma stay. Emma's grateful, her eyes on the lake. She can keep this damsel under control, maybe there's hope for her in the hero department yet.

 

As she watches the water it starts to bubble and froth. It looks like it's boiling as a whirlpool appears in the middle of the lake. Emma takes a step forward, confusion dawning on her face and watches as Snow squares her chin and steps bravely forward.

 

The creature that emerges from the lake is most definitely David Bowie. But as Emma watches it - him? - move, she can see that there is something most definitely inhuman about him. His hair is like floss and his chin is far too pointed to be a normal man's. He walks with an almost catlike grace across water that Emma's damn sure isn't solid, and pauses in front of Snow.

 

 "Your Majesty," Snow says, bowing low. She stays there for a moment before straightening. Emma wonders if she's ever met this man before, because there's something that passes between them that is unspoken.

Behind her, Aurora inhales deeply, and Emma reaches down and grabs her free hand and squeezes it as best she can. She's trying to be reassuring, but she doesn't dare take her eyes off of this creature. 

"Yours is a face I was not expecting to ever see in this realm again, Snow White," the king says, tapping his chin and stepping onto the shore. He's tall as all get out, towering over Snow, looking down his pointed nose at her. She does not drop her sword, and Emma's already giving her mom more badass points to add to her collection. "But I can't say I'm at all surprised to see you back here."

"One could say the same to you sir," Snow's tone is even and she does not flinch as he clasps his hands behind his back and looks down at her as though she is the most insignificant being he’s seen that day. Which is saying something, because he’s king of the _goblins_. "I have come to see assistance, your kingdom to mine."

"And why would I help such a petty human kingdom as yours?" Emma has only seen the movie once, but the portrayal was spot-on. It's all haughty arrogance and a superior tone that really grates on Emma's nerves. She hears it on occasion from Snow and Aurora, Mulan seems to be immune to it somehow. Emma wonders if it's because she's from Han and not from the Enchanted Forest proper, or if it's because she's not a noble. 

 

It's hard to tell with these people, really.

 

"Call it what you will," Snow replies. Emma thinks that her personality is perhaps far better suited for beating this man upside the head with the butt of her sword, but she keeps her mouth shut. She's starting to realize that she has absolutely no idea what she'd do in such a situation and that she is way out of her purview. She'll let Snow do the talking, it seems like it might be the smarter play at this particular moment in time. "My mother once did you and the whole of the Labyrinth a favor that you chose to never repay."

 

"Come now dear, I would hardly call her your _mother_ ," There's a mocking quality to his tone that reminds Emma of Gold, but there's something far more sinister there as well. She supposes that it's because Gold is just a man, and this being is absolutely not one, despite the tight pants and fabulously eighties hair. "Any favors owed are her's alone to cash in."

 

For a moment there, Emma though that Snow was talking about her actual mother, but when both the Goblin King and Snow imply that it was _Regina_ , she gets an idea. Aurora's fingers dig into her palm and Emma turns to see the princess shake her head violently. "Don't," Aurora mouths and Emma rolls her eyes. 

 

"Perhaps you can extend a favor then," Snow asks, all business and very obviously ignoring Emma and Aurora's exchange. "The mother of Regina's son is here, and we need to find a way back to him."

 

He taps his chin for a moment and then shakes his head to the negative. "Snow," he begins, his tone mocking, "Snow, Snow... don't you know that you do not merely ask the Goblin King for favors?" He lowers his gloved hand and touches Snow's face and Aurora's fingernails dig deeper into Emma's hand as she holds Emma back from lunging forward and slapping the creep's hand away. "Such things come with a ... _price_."

 

Snow seems to contemplate this, her sword lowering her unsteadily. "What is it that you want, Goblin King."

 

"Oh, who's to say I want it now?" He tosses his head back and laughs, wicked and cruel. Very Voldemort-like, if Emma were to draw a comparison. "No, dear Snow, that would be _far_ too easy."

 

"What then?" Snow demands.

 

He taps his chin, his gaze sliding over to rest on Emma for a long moment. "A marriage, to unify our kingdoms."

 

Emma's jaw drops and she wrestles her hand away from Aurora. No way, no way in goddamn hell. "Emma," Aurora hisses and makes to grab Emma by her jacket. 

 

"You are not her true love," Snow points out. "And your heart belongs to another."

 

He shrugs, "That is my price, Snow White. Shall I leave you to contemplate it?"

 

Emma shucks off her jacket and storms down the shore to stand at the water’s edge. "No," she says, arms folded and defiant before this king. "We'll find another way."

 

"Suit yourself," he says, an orb of pure magic hovering before him as he pauses for the briefest of moments and looks long and hard at Emma. "Your Majesty," he says with a mocking bow as he vanishes.

 

Snow turns to her then, her face drawn and angry. Emma meets her gaze with one as resolute and as angry. She cannot believe that Snow would even _entertain_  such an idea, let alone give voice to such a request. "You've lost us the one sure chance we had at getting back," Snow says sternly.

 

"At the price of my own freedom?" Emma glares at Snow. She's not from this world, she was raised in a modern environment where things are not decided by treaties and arranged marriages. She knows Snow and Charming's story well enough to know that they do not put much faith in true love and she hates that the world is so damn backward. "Are you insane?"

 

"I agree," Aurora, sweet and wonderful Aurora with her pointy knife and scowls, comes to stand at Emma's shoulder. "Your daughter is not from this world, Snow; it seems unfair to subject her to their rules." She turns to Emma and adds, "Besides, I thought you were married?"

 

Emma balks and Snow's nostrils flare dangerously. "Uh... what gave you that idea, Aurora?" Her voice is a little shaky and she's trying really damn hard to not look at snow.

 

"You share a son with the queen, Regina. Are you not already married?" Aurora inclines her head off to one side and looks pensive as Snow quietly has an aneurysm. Emma wants to laugh, really she does, but she's fucking pissed and it is fun to mess with Snow. 

 

"Nah," Emma shakes her head and pats Aurora on the shoulder. "Not there yet."

 

Snow makes a feeble attempt at an apology later on as they head south again. Emma's trying to remember the stories she loved as a kid - wondering if there's another way to get back. They’ve lost their Narnia portal and the Goblin King isn't very helpful. She's got half a mind to ask about a looking glass - but she's seen how avoidant Snow is of reflective surfaces and resolves that maybe she'll wait on that one.

 

"I would never do that to you," Snow says as Emma grabs at leaves from low hanging trees and slowly shreds them to nothingness as she walks. Aurora and Mulan are up ahead, their heads pressed together as they whisper about something to each other. Emma thinks that they're just fucking adorable and again wishes that they'd fuck because it'd make everyone's life a lot easier if Mulan didn't have a big ole stick up her butt. 

 

She doesn't want to, but she turns towards Snow and opens her mouth before she can stop herself. "You were going to _sell me off_."

 

"I wouldn't have," Snow mutters, looking down. A lie. Emma feels the anger well up inside her but forces it down. She'll figure this out on her own if she has to. "Not like that anyway. That being is not one to be taken lightly; his every request must be considered carefully."

 

She cannot believe Snow. "You would leave me to this place and this god-awful life?"

 

Snow's face falls, and Emma doesn't dare think about what her life could have been like, had she grown up here. She'd probably be married off by now, no better than a breeding sow

 

"I just want to go home," Emma mutters, turning and heading down the path after Mulan and Aurora. 

 

Snow, thank the heavens, does not protest and merely follows silently after her. 

 

They all have a lot to learn about family, it seems.


End file.
